Yu Iwamoto began adult life working in the slums, refugee camps and precarious schools of Afghanistan. Had he even heard, back then, of the Oki Islands off the coast of Shimane Prefecture?

He may have. The little archipelago is remote but famous. Political rebels in times gone by were exiled there to reflect on their crimes — or nurse their grievances. Emperor Go-Daigo (1288-1339), for instance. Who can a divine sovereign rebel against? Against upstart military governors who monopolized real power in the Emperor's name, and at the Emperor's expense.

His first rebellion having come to grief (a second one did rather better), Go-Daigo was reduced to composing sad poems at distant Oki, one of which reads, "If fate had decreed / that I must sink in the end / to this abysmal depth / whyever was I born to the highest rank of all?"